Today is the First Sunday of Advent. The new day of the Church’s year.
When all the rest of the world is rushing to sing Christmas carols, the Church resists.
That's because Advent is the Church's exile. Advent isn't Christmas. Advent is exile. Waiting, hoping God will act in the future. We are slaves in Egypt. We are exiles in Babylon. We are sad friends mourning the the sufferings and deaths of a fallen world. Places like a synagoge in Pittsburgh or a shopping mall in Alabama, capture our attention and imagination. Where is God? We are waiting. That is Advent. Learning to be patient, learning to wait on God.
Which is why I think the Church should do more with the Book of Job during Advent.
Up until the Book of Job, the story has been governed by a theology of retribution, the "blessings and curses" of Moses (Deuteronomy 11). Do good and stay faithful to God and you will be blessed. Turn to wickedness and idolatry and you will get punishment and exile.
The entry into the Promised Land. Judges followed by kings. Warnings upon warnings about the blessings and curses. Stay faithful. Do not bow to the false gods.
Deaf ears. Hard hearts. The Kingdom divides.
Israel descends into idolatry. Its Assyrian exile begins.
Judah follows. Its Babylonian exile begins.
All the while, this logic of retribution holds. The righteous are blessed. Sinners are punished. That's how God has set up the world. Bad things happen to bad people.
Which is why I think the Church should do more with the Book of Job during Advent.
Up until the Book of Job, the story has been governed by a theology of retribution, the "blessings and curses" of Moses (Deuteronomy 11). Do good and stay faithful to God and you will be blessed. Turn to wickedness and idolatry and you will get punishment and exile.
The entry into the Promised Land. Judges followed by kings. Warnings upon warnings about the blessings and curses. Stay faithful. Do not bow to the false gods.
Deaf ears. Hard hearts. The Kingdom divides.
Israel descends into idolatry. Its Assyrian exile begins.
Judah follows. Its Babylonian exile begins.
All the while, this logic of retribution holds. The righteous are blessed. Sinners are punished. That's how God has set up the world. Bad things happen to bad people.
And then you come to the Book of Job.
And
an entire theological trajectory -- starting in Deuteronomy and traced
through 2 Kings -- gets knocked off course. Good people are always
blessed? Not so fast, says the Book of Job.
Job
is a man of integrity. And yet he suffers. Chapter after chapter,
Job's friends argue for the theology of retribution. Job is suffering,
so he must have sinned. That's the way the world works. Moses said
so.
Job disagrees.
He's done nothing wrong. And yet God has cursed him. There is no
lawful relationship here between virtue and suffering. Bad things
happen to good people. Young black men are shot, multiple times, and lay unattended for minutes, even hours, afterward. Families are left to discover their loss via Facebook. Authorities are quick to judge and to call the police aggressors heroes.
But Job waits on God. Waiting for vindication. Waiting for a chance to plead his case. Job wants answers. Waiting.
And
here we are, in America, skipping right over Advent for the Christmas
carols. Small surprise -- we'd rather have the glory without the
silence. That's the theology of empires.
This is why I think the Church should do more with the Book of Job for the four weeks of Advent.
We talk about "the patience of Job". Patience.
Patience is the theology of Advent, of the Kingdom of God.
Waiting of God. That's Job. That's Advent.
That's us.
But in the waiting is also expectation, longing, and hope.